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The Inkjet Conference, under the title

TheIJC, organised jointly by ESMA

(European Specialist Printers Manufac-

turers Association) and Steve Knight

from Direct Digital Technologies, was held in

Dusseldorf on 24-25 October. The event brought

together 525 delegates from 23 countries, in what

is now the largest conference devoted solely to

inkjet printing technologies. TheIJC covers the

complete range of applications in all industries

and brings in speakers from all sides of the

inkjet printing industry – digital print machines,

print heads, software and chemistry of both inks

and media surfaces and provides an ideal and

exciting venue for cross-fertilisation of ideas.

This year, there were 62 lectures broken

up into two plenary sessions on both days

(concentrating on print head technology and new

developments) and three parallel technical tracks

over the two days of the conference. Presentations

six in total, however, there were considerable

developments in print head technology and ink

and media chemistry, which could well have

direct impact on digital textiles, particularly new

print head technology. An excellent feature of the

conference was the table top exhibitions, which

this year numbered 87 companies and research

organisations, which gave invaluable opportunity

for networking and further follow-up discussion

with many of the presenters.

Peter Buttiens, CEO of ESMA, said: “TheIJC

has been an enormous success. In four

years, we have almost doubled the number

of presentations and more than doubled the

number of table tops, with 36 new table tops

Dr John Provost, consulting editor of Digital Textile reviews the developments from the TheIJC Dusseldorf

INKJET DEVELOPMENTS

TO IMPACT TEXTILES

Opening session of

TheIJC in Dusseldorf

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this year. In addition, 74 new companies sent delegates this

year, with 195 new attendees. “The number of exhibitors and

delegates bring together so many possibilities. The level of

presentations was exceptional. We have been re-inventing

TheIJC every year. We have 40% new exhibitors, and they

bring new subjects and we have 60% more delegates. This is

the platform for inkjet.”

As there was so many technical presentations, it is

impossible to cover them all in this brief review, I would just like

to highlight two areas; print head developments and pigment

ink and pre-treatment developments, which are particularly

relevant to digital textile printing.

The conference plenary sessions, over the two days,

focused on print head technology and developments from

many of the major print-head manufacturers, including

the major piezo print head manufacturers Kyocera,

Seiko Printek, Fuji Dimatix and Xaar, and together with

presentations from Kodak with its Stream and UltraStream

continuous print head technology and Hewlett Packard

(HP), with thermal print head developments and, gave an

up to date picture of the current state of developments.

Print heads

As discussed many times in Digital Textile,1 the key driving force

in the market expansion of digital textiles has been print head

developments, enabling production levels, quality and operability

performance to constantly improve. The main print heads used

in digital textile printing are based on piezo drop-on-demand

(DOD) technology and is now used in all new digital textile print

machines introductions. The introduction of the Kyocera KJ4B

print head array) print machines by MS and high production

scanning machines by both EFI Reggiani and MS, has given

the Kyocera KJ4B print head a dominant position in production

volumes in the digital textile printing industry.

Figure 1 gives an overview of the global print head market

share in digital textile production volume terms, based on the

analysis by WTiN Intelligence: Digital Textiles in 2016. Figure 2

typical digital textile printing machines.

With the current volume of digital textiles (~1.57 billion in

2016 according to WTiN Intelligence: Digital Textiles), the

market looks ever more attractive, in terms of both print head

sales, machine sales and ink volumes.

For the digital textile print industry to continue its

expansion, the key is the on-going developments in print

heads. It will be interesting to watch the major piezo print

head manufacturers, who are successful in other digital

printing industries, such as the signage, graphic, ceramic

and corrugated printing industries, whether they can

increase their market share with new head developments,

or will Kyocera keep its number one market position, with

on-going developments in ceramic print head technology?

Shin Ishikura of Kyocera, presented a very comprehensive

overview of bulk piezo ceramic technology, going into great

detail of the manufacturing processes, particularly the current

Kyocera ceramic sheet approach and comparing this with

Silicon MEMS production methods. Shin Ishikura, illustrated

this with the evolution of the company’s technology, which

has led to second-generation print heads and further future

developments (see Figure 3).

Shane O’Neill of Fuji Dimatix gave an equally impressive

technical presentation of the advances in the other major print

head technology approach, Silicon MEMS technology, and how

it could lead to the next generation of print heads. Fuji Dimatix

provide Silicon MEMS print heads to the digital textile industry,

with its StarFire1024 print head and the Samba G3L print head,

Table Top Exhibitors was a feature of TheIJC in Dusseldorf

Figure 1 2016 print head market share by volume of digital textile production

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established in SPG’s Archer technology found in the Pike single

pass machine and Javelin high production scanning machine.

The next development described by Shane O’Neil is a new

version of the Samba print head termed the Samba GSM print

head, a very recent introduction announced in June 2017.2 This

applications and will complement the Samba G3L head. It will

be interesting to see whether the digital textile printing industry

will be a priority target market for the Samba GSM head.

Angus Condie of Xaar gave a presentation on Xaar’s high

laydown (HL) technology,3 which has been developed for

printing industries and used for braille and 3D Printing. The

HL technology operates in multi-drop binary mode, which

enables three times the amount of ink to be deposited

using the Xaar 1003, Xaar 2001 and Xaar 501/2 print heads.

However, there was no mention of any textile application,

although it could be interesting for certain textile printing

applications, where high ink volumes are required.

Subsequent to the conference, Xaar announced that its

1201 print head, introduced at Drupa 2016, and based on thin

a digital textile application.4 The new d.gen printer, the Papyrus

740K, uses the 1201 head and was shown printing disperse

dye sub inks at the KOSign show in Korea in November 2017.

Chemistry

a number of interesting presentations examining the textile

pigment area and pre-treatment technologies.

Dr Hamid Shiraz of Fuji Imaging Colours, presenting a range

of textile inks, but in particular a range of digital textile pigments

based on RxD pigments,5 manufactured at its UK plant,

which uses interesting reactive dispersant technology, where

a polymer network surrounds the pigment giving dispersion

stability. The formulated textile pigments termed Pro-Jet TX

Figure 2: Print heads used in typical digital textile printers (all Piezo drop on demand technology)

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421, claim to have high fastness levels and proven design for

high-speed single pass jetting.

Other presentations highlighted encapsulated pigment

approaches for digital printing, for example from Matsui of

Japan. J Martineze of Matsui USA, described the company’s

patented encapsulated textile pigment ink and Daisuke

Hamada of Kao Chemicals, described another approach to

technology was initially developed for digitally printing polyester

Chemical encapsulated pigment ink approach on textiles.

Additionally, there were two presentations on textile

pre-treatments from Brad Riley of Lubrizol and Helmuth Haas

of CHT Germany. The presentation by Dr Haas was extremely

in detail, the two stages in the preparation of textiles for digital

printing, ie PFP (prepared for printing) and PFDP (prepared

Digital Textile.6 Dr Haas,

used both Lab colorimetric values and ISO fastness standards

to quantitatively assess the results of his evaluations of

pre-treatment chemicals, used in the both the initial PFP stage

and the second PFDP stage. His results clearly showed that

As discussed previously in a recent article in Digital Textile,7

digital textile pigment printing volumes are still small in the

roll-to-roll area, at most only in the region of 3% of the global

digital textile printing market. However, with considerable

research efforts currently focused on this area, in both pigment

dispersion and pre-treatment technologies, there could well be

new technology introductions in the near future.

The complete set of presentations will be available from the

organisers. TheIJC is taking its conference concept to the USA

on 12-13 April 2018 at the Westin O’Hare Chicago, with over

50% of the table tops already booked. TheIJC will return to the

Swissotel, Düsseldorf on 15-17 October 2018 and a call for

papers and table top booking is now open. For more details,

please contact info@theijc.com or contact ESMA.

Figure 3: Kyocera print head evolution (diagram courtesy of Kyocera Fineceramics)

(1) J Provost, All in The Head- Print Head Review, Digital

Textile Magazine, Issue 3,2016, pp. 10-16

(2) Silicon Mems coming to Scanning Applications with

com/press/news/display_news?newsID=881199

(3) https://www.xaar.com/en/campaigns/high-

laydown-end-user-landing-page/

(4) d.gen launches Xaar 1201 Printer at Kosign 2017,

16th November 2017 https://www.xaar.com/

en/news/2017/dgen-launches-xaar-1201-printers-at-

kosign-2017/

colorants/pro-jet-aqueous-pigment-dispersions/#rxd

(6) J Provost, Be Prepared-Pre-Treatment is the key to

Success in Digital Textile Printing Digital Textile

Magazine, Issue 2 ,2011, pp9-12

(7) J Provost, Pigment Ink Developments for High

Production Digital Textiles, Digital Textile Magazine,

Issue 2, 2016, pp. 10-20

References